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James T. Fields
| birth_place = Portsmouth, New Hampshire | death_date = April | death_place = Boston, Massachusetts]] | occupation = editor, publisher, poet | nationality = American | signature = }} James Thomas Fields (December 31, 1817 - April 24, 1881) was an American poet publisher, and editor. Life Youth Fields was born James Thomas Field (the family later added the final 's) in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963: 1. His father was a sea captain, who died before Fields was three.Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991: 281. ISBN 0-87745-332-2 He and his brother were raised by their mother and her siblings, their aunt Mary and uncle George.Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963: 6. At the age of 14, Fields took a job at the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, as an apprentice to publishers Carter and Hendee.Sedgwick, Ellery. History of the Atlantic Monthly, 1856–1909: Yankee /humanism at High Tide and Ebb. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994: 70. ISBN 978-1-55849-793-1 Afterwards he wrote for the newspapers, and in 1835 he read an anniversary poem,Britannica 1911, 10, 327. entitled “Commerce,” before the Boston Mercantile Library Association.Britannica 1911, 10, 328.Association. In 1839 he became junior partner in the publishing and bpokselling firm known after 1846 as Ticknor & Fields, and after 1868 as Fields, Osgood & Company. He was the publisher of the foremost contemporary American writers, with whom he was on terms of close personal friendship, and he was the American publisher of some of the best-known British writers of his time, some of whom, also, he knew intimately. The 1st collected edition of De Quincey's works (20 volumes, 1850-1855) was published by his firm. As a publisher he was characterized by a somewhat rare combination of keen business acumen and sound, discriminating literary taste, and as a man he was known for his geniality and charm of manner. Fields was reputedly able to ascertain what book a visitor to the Old Corner Bookstore would purchase within 10 minutes of arrival.Goodman, Susan and Carl Dawson. William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005: 122. ISBN 0-520-23896-6 In 1862-1870, as the successor of James Russell Lowell, Fields edited the Atlantic Monthly, which he and Ticknor had purchased for $10,000.Duberman, Martin. James Russell Lowell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966: 180. At a New Year's Eve party in 1865, he met William Dean Howells and 10 days later offered him a position as assistant editor of the Atlantic. Howells accepted but was somewhat dismayed by Fields's close supervision.Goodman, Susan and Carl Dawson. William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005: 107–108. ISBN 0-520-23896-6 When Hawthorne died in 1864, Fields served as a pallbearer for his funeral alongside Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edwin Percy Whipple.Baker, Carlos. Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. New York: Viking Press, 1996: 448. ISBN 0-670-86675-X. In 1867, he performed the same role after the death of Nathaniel Parker Willis, along with Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell, and Samuel Gridley Howe.Baker, Thomas N. Sentiment and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame. New York, Oxford University Press, 2001: 187. ISBN 0-19-512073-6 In 1871 he retired from business and from his editorial duties, and devoted himself to lecturing and to writing. Of his books the chief were the collection of sketches and essays entitled Underbrush (1877) and the chapters of reminiscence composing Yesterdays with Authors (1871), in which he recorded his personal friendship with Wordsworth, Thackeray, Dickens, Hawthorne, and others. Fields died in Boston on April 24, 1881. Private life Fields was engaged in 1844 to Mary Willard, a local woman 6 years younger than he was. Before they could be married, she died of tuberculosis on April 17, 1845.Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963: 106. He maintained a close friendship with her family and, on March 13, 1850, married her 18-year old sister Eliza Willard at Boston's Federal Street Church.Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963: 136. Also sick with tuberculosis, she died on July 13, 1850.Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963: 138. His 2nd wife, Annie (Adams) Fields (born 1834), whom he married in 1854, published Under the Olive (1880), a book of verses; James T. Fields: Biographical notes and personal sketches (1882); Authors and Friends (1896); The Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1897); and Orpheus (1900). Mrs. Fields was instrumental in helping Mr. Fields establish literary salons at their home at 37 Charles Street in Boston, where they entertained many well-known writers.Wineapple, Brenda. Hawthorne: A Life. New York: Random House, 2004: 353–353. ISBN 0-8129-7291-0 Writing In addition to his work as a publisher and essayist, Fields wrote poetry. A number of his works are collected in his book Ballads and Verses published in 1880. This volume contains the poem "The Ballad of the Tempest", which includes the lines: :"We are lost!" the captain shouted :As he staggered down the stairs Recognition Annie Adams Fields wrote the biography Memoir of James T. Fields, by his Wife (Boston, 1881) After Fields's death, his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem called "Auf Wiedersehen" dedicated to him. In popular culture Fields, along with Longfellow, is featured in the 1st and 3rd of Matthew Pearl's novels, The Dante Club (2003) and The Last Dickens (2009). Fields is mentioned in the 1994 film version of Little Women. Publications Poetry *''Poems. Boston: William D. Ticknor, 1849.Poems (1849), Internet Archive, Web, Feb. 17, 2013. *Ballads and other verses. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1881.Ballads and other verses, Making of America, University of Michigan. Web, Feb. 17, 2013. Non-fiction *Old Acquaintance: Barry Cornwall and Some of his Friends. Boston: Osgood, 1876.Old Acquaintance: Barry Cornwall and Some of his Friends (1876), Internet Archive, Web, Feb. 17, 2013. *Yesterdays with Authors. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1887.Yesterdays with Authors (1887), Internet Archive, Web, Feb. 17, 2013. Edited *Favorite Authors: A companion-book of prose and poetry'' (anthology). Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866. *[http://archive.org/details/householdfriend01fielgoog Household Friends for Every Season] (anthology). Boston: Osgood, 1881. See also *List of U.S. poets *List of American book publishers References * . Wikisource, Web, Apr. 27, 2018. Notes External links ;Books * *Works by James Thomas Fields at the Internet Archive * Ballads and other verses, by James T. Fields at the University of Michigan Library ;About * Eli Siegel on Satire Comment on 'The Owl Critic,' satiric poem by James Thomas Fields * Original article is at James Thomas Fields. Category:1817 births Category:1881 deaths Category:American book publishers (people) Category:American essayists Category:American poets Category:American magazine editors Category:American magazine publishers (people) Category:The Atlantic (magazine) people Category:People from Boston, Massachusetts Category:19th-century American people Category:Burials at Mount Auburn Cemetery